Asia

Scientists have published a series of recommendations to enable communities and managers to minimise the impact of lionfish in the Mediterranean Sea. The invasive species was first noticed off the coast of the Lebanon in 2012, with sightings since recorded as far west as Sicily, and north into the Adriatic Sea off Croatia. More entered in 2015 due to the enlargement and deepening of the Suez Canal, with their spread unimpeded due to a lack of common predators. Researchers in the UK and Cyprus have said increasing lionfish densities – combined with the species' generalist diet and consumption of ecologically and socio-economically important fish – has the potential to result in further disruption of an already stressed marine environment. They have now published a Guide to Lionfish Management in the Mediterranean (PDF | 8.0 MB), which features a series of recommendations through which they hope lionfish populations can be managed.

FAO launched today a three-year Global Action for Fall Armyworm Control to scale up efforts to curb the growing spread of the invasive pest which is causing serious damage to food production and affecting millions of farmers across the world. Fall Armyworm (FAW), a crop pest native to the Americas, has rapidly spread through Africa, and to the Near East and Asia in the past four years. "It (Fall Armyworm) threatens food security of hundreds of millions of people and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers," said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu. He made the remarks at the launch of the Global Action on the sidelines of the FAO's Council, the Organization's executive body. "This is a global threat that requires a global perspective," he stressed, urging the FAO member states "to greatly scale up the existing efforts" to prevent the further spread of this harmful pest to new regions.

An insect that can infest and damage hundreds of hectares of maize fields, literally overnight, is sweeping across Asia – alarming smallholder farmers and threatening livelihoods – but the damage can be limited, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported today. Fall Armyworm is native to the Americas. However, since 2016 it has been aggressively moving ever eastwards, sweeping across Africa, and making landfall for the first time in Asia last summer. Fall Armyworm (FAW) was first detected in India in July 2018 and by January of this year, it had spread to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and China’s Yunnan Province.

Recently, a team led by Prof. LI Yiming from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted a comprehensive study evaluating the invasion risk of global alien vertebrates, to help facilitate the balance between development and conservation for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This study, published with the title of "Risks of biological invasion on the Belt and Road" in Current Biology, was online on January 24, 2019. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China is regarded as the biggest global development program ever to occur on earth. It involves nearly half of our planet across Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and America, covering 77% (27/35) global biodiversity hotspots. Its high expenditure into infrastructure constructions may accelerate trade and transportation and thus promote alien species invasions, which is one primary anthropogenic threat to global biodiversity.